The best argument in my mind to Yimbyism (at least here in the Midwest) is that we're not actually growing. We don't need new housing supply so much as we need to keep at the current level (or shrink sustainably). That may change if we get climate related migration.
But my response to this is that YIMBY isnt simply densification; but giving the market freedom in the classically liberal sense; to tear down the old, innovate and create dynamic spaces. That response doesn't hold up to either progressives or NIMBYs though; given their mutual dislike of property rights (good example of the horseshoe theory of politics) which is why we still see so much attention given to "participatory" zoning hearings that block the markets ability to create.
I think for most of these argument the "yes, and" approach is how I see it. yes,green spaces, and more housing. Yes, not Manhattan, and not LA either, yes more housing. Yes, social housing, and more housing. Yes, we need more sidewalks, and we need high speed rail, and if we are arguing priorities...sidewalks for sure. How are any of these anti YIMBY? Only if you jump to the conclusion that every community becomes Manhattan - Brooklyn isn't even Manhattan. I think these arguments are a bit alarmist?
The futile "it is what it is" is not convincing to me. The "yimbys are mean on the internet" is unfortunate, I try to be nice and also not too online. But that's also kinda just the internet in 2024, right?
I am 100% YIMBY but even I will admit the ideal will never happen. We can build all the housing we want but it we don't build the infrastructure and businesses needed to support all those people at the same time... it doesn't work. You end up with too many people in an area that is not designed to support them.
For me, there are two effective anti-urbanism arguments which are related but I see them as distinct.
1) If this was so great, we would be doing it already and probably at scale. The "If your clients had invented Facebook, they would have invented Facebook" retort.
2) This might be a rehash of point 1, but for me the futility argument really sticks. We, as a people, do not want this. Our collective identity (and resulting land use) is tied up with the automobile, its benefits (real and perceived), and everything else that goes along with it - highways, roads, repairs, the aesthetic of cars, etc. I may think that this is a blind alley, but I believe that the median American does not see it that way and the idea that this is going to change is a fools' errand.
The biggest NIMBY arguments I hear are (1) traffic and (2) we don't want our kids learning in trailers. I'll dig into point #2 a bit.
The essence of point #2, and the reason NIMBY exists, is that the costs of YIMBY are felt short-term (in an economics sense, before the market/society can adjust to a new regime), but the solutions are medium to long term. In this example, a YIMBY community with growing population and businesses could in theory build more/bigger schools to accommodate the new residents, but planning/building/approving schools takes time, and making it economical requires a certain economy of scale. Ie: if a school is full with 300 people and is projected to have 20 more students in Sept. due to a new development, it's hard to justify a whole new school.
If I tell my neighbor we could build new schools, he'll laugh at me and point out that (i) he'd be paying taxes for new schools immediately and (ii) his kids will probably suffer in trailers through graduation before the schools are built.
Similar long vs. short-term dilemmas exist re: traffic. In theory there should be more and better transit. In practice, if the town of Berkeley Heights, NJ approves a new mixed-use development, it's going to need parking for every residence because you can't really get by in Berkely Heights today w/o a car.
"Urbanism" is too big a target. What the best argument for not relaxing land use requirement is a particular way in a particular place IS.
Maybe you mean what is the best class of argument against specific class of proposals.
For example [not necessarily the best argument], that trading off the aesthetic preferences of the current residents of a neighborhood against the benefits that will accrue to the city in taxes, the new residents the new businesses, and the land owners and the developers is unjust real specific people will be harmed (in their estimate) vs hypothetical benefits.
One argument I can think of against YIMBY (maybe less so urbanism?) is existing residents’ dread of construction noise and inconvenience. We are very pro-housing, and live directly across a large office site that is slated to be turned into housing. And even though we are all for this project (in its 3rd or 4th year of the planning process, no ground has been broken yet), I do find myself dreading the noise, dust, mess, etc of construction.
I think the issue is fulfilling people's preferences. Let's take Venice, Italy. If Venice built high rises, would people travel there? Probably not. So it would hurt itself. Likewise with many smaller, sprawled towns we have the same preferences for things. People want what they want and once we change it, people might leave.
The issue is not the preference - the issue is are you accordingly paying the cost that comes with that benefit/preference. Like car pollution, drivers often do not pay their cost. Similarly here, if you'd like a small town house, you should probably pay a much higher tax (this could be leveraged on income). This should also reflect the myriad of additional costs a low density area has.
Moreover, the money gained from these taxes should be spent on housing and transport for other people that live there.
This is a great question to ask - we all should try to ask ourselves these things, and challenge our assumptions.
In terms of YIMBYism, there are some fairly easy responses. Just building a whole bunch of stuff doesn't guarantee your place will be successful. We built a whole lot of stuff post-WWII, and how'd that work out? Most suburbia hasn't aged well, and the urban renewal projects we built en masse were an unmitigated disaster. There is actually value in trying to do things well, and to do them in the spirit of long-standing human traditions. Most of our 20th century experiments in building lots of stuff won't last a fraction as long as the average village built by peasants 1000 years ago.
A lot of the roots of NIMBYism go back to people trying to protect their very nice neighborhoods from the loads of crap we were building from the 50s-80s. That's not excusing all their behavior and arguments, but if you don't understand that aspect, and don't understand the history, you'll make all the same mistakes and invite an even bigger backlash.
What I feel like a lot of this comes back to is how the 20th century experiments in city-building completely disconnected us from things that were very normal for thousands of years. People can blame it on "the car," but there's plenty of places that didn't wreck themselves for easy parking and fast traffic. Cars themselves are not incompatible with great places that stand the test of time. I wish we could somehow frame this more as "natural human settlements" instead of "urbanism."
>>Yeah, when I see someone say “I should be able to live anywhere on any budget” I get why people connect housing advocacy with entitlement. That will never really be the case.
When I hear someone say this, I don't hear entitlement, I hear that they just want to live in their own city within 20 minutes of wherever the heck they work, and have a walkable neighborhood.
We're supposed to be one of the richest societies ever -- in fact, the original argument for the extravagant suburban development pattern was that we could afford it! If that's the case, then walkability shouldn't be considered some insane luxury that only the rich should be able to afford -- and thus to which younger people would supposedly (wrongly) feel "entitled" to.
My self doubt about urbanism comes in when I reflect that maybe my taste in the built space is just me being pretentious. Normal people like to drive (hard to argue that driving isn't convenient) and have a larger living space at the expense of a more pleasant built space. From my experience living in Estonia, as people have gotten wealthier, they want to own their own car and move to the suburbs--just like Americans do.
This isn't really a strong counterargument against urbanism, but generally speaking, the poorest people in the world live in crowded in cities because they have no choice. Once people become wealthier people will prefer to move to have more space, maybe own a car, and only once people become very wealthy and educated will a minority care enough about their built space to prefer urbanism (and an even smaller minority will care enough to write about it online or comment on a post like this one!)
The best argument in my mind to Yimbyism (at least here in the Midwest) is that we're not actually growing. We don't need new housing supply so much as we need to keep at the current level (or shrink sustainably). That may change if we get climate related migration.
But my response to this is that YIMBY isnt simply densification; but giving the market freedom in the classically liberal sense; to tear down the old, innovate and create dynamic spaces. That response doesn't hold up to either progressives or NIMBYs though; given their mutual dislike of property rights (good example of the horseshoe theory of politics) which is why we still see so much attention given to "participatory" zoning hearings that block the markets ability to create.
I think for most of these argument the "yes, and" approach is how I see it. yes,green spaces, and more housing. Yes, not Manhattan, and not LA either, yes more housing. Yes, social housing, and more housing. Yes, we need more sidewalks, and we need high speed rail, and if we are arguing priorities...sidewalks for sure. How are any of these anti YIMBY? Only if you jump to the conclusion that every community becomes Manhattan - Brooklyn isn't even Manhattan. I think these arguments are a bit alarmist?
The futile "it is what it is" is not convincing to me. The "yimbys are mean on the internet" is unfortunate, I try to be nice and also not too online. But that's also kinda just the internet in 2024, right?
I am 100% YIMBY but even I will admit the ideal will never happen. We can build all the housing we want but it we don't build the infrastructure and businesses needed to support all those people at the same time... it doesn't work. You end up with too many people in an area that is not designed to support them.
For me, there are two effective anti-urbanism arguments which are related but I see them as distinct.
1) If this was so great, we would be doing it already and probably at scale. The "If your clients had invented Facebook, they would have invented Facebook" retort.
2) This might be a rehash of point 1, but for me the futility argument really sticks. We, as a people, do not want this. Our collective identity (and resulting land use) is tied up with the automobile, its benefits (real and perceived), and everything else that goes along with it - highways, roads, repairs, the aesthetic of cars, etc. I may think that this is a blind alley, but I believe that the median American does not see it that way and the idea that this is going to change is a fools' errand.
The biggest NIMBY arguments I hear are (1) traffic and (2) we don't want our kids learning in trailers. I'll dig into point #2 a bit.
The essence of point #2, and the reason NIMBY exists, is that the costs of YIMBY are felt short-term (in an economics sense, before the market/society can adjust to a new regime), but the solutions are medium to long term. In this example, a YIMBY community with growing population and businesses could in theory build more/bigger schools to accommodate the new residents, but planning/building/approving schools takes time, and making it economical requires a certain economy of scale. Ie: if a school is full with 300 people and is projected to have 20 more students in Sept. due to a new development, it's hard to justify a whole new school.
If I tell my neighbor we could build new schools, he'll laugh at me and point out that (i) he'd be paying taxes for new schools immediately and (ii) his kids will probably suffer in trailers through graduation before the schools are built.
Similar long vs. short-term dilemmas exist re: traffic. In theory there should be more and better transit. In practice, if the town of Berkeley Heights, NJ approves a new mixed-use development, it's going to need parking for every residence because you can't really get by in Berkely Heights today w/o a car.
"Urbanism" is too big a target. What the best argument for not relaxing land use requirement is a particular way in a particular place IS.
Maybe you mean what is the best class of argument against specific class of proposals.
For example [not necessarily the best argument], that trading off the aesthetic preferences of the current residents of a neighborhood against the benefits that will accrue to the city in taxes, the new residents the new businesses, and the land owners and the developers is unjust real specific people will be harmed (in their estimate) vs hypothetical benefits.
One argument I can think of against YIMBY (maybe less so urbanism?) is existing residents’ dread of construction noise and inconvenience. We are very pro-housing, and live directly across a large office site that is slated to be turned into housing. And even though we are all for this project (in its 3rd or 4th year of the planning process, no ground has been broken yet), I do find myself dreading the noise, dust, mess, etc of construction.
I think the issue is fulfilling people's preferences. Let's take Venice, Italy. If Venice built high rises, would people travel there? Probably not. So it would hurt itself. Likewise with many smaller, sprawled towns we have the same preferences for things. People want what they want and once we change it, people might leave.
The issue is not the preference - the issue is are you accordingly paying the cost that comes with that benefit/preference. Like car pollution, drivers often do not pay their cost. Similarly here, if you'd like a small town house, you should probably pay a much higher tax (this could be leveraged on income). This should also reflect the myriad of additional costs a low density area has.
Moreover, the money gained from these taxes should be spent on housing and transport for other people that live there.
This is a great question to ask - we all should try to ask ourselves these things, and challenge our assumptions.
In terms of YIMBYism, there are some fairly easy responses. Just building a whole bunch of stuff doesn't guarantee your place will be successful. We built a whole lot of stuff post-WWII, and how'd that work out? Most suburbia hasn't aged well, and the urban renewal projects we built en masse were an unmitigated disaster. There is actually value in trying to do things well, and to do them in the spirit of long-standing human traditions. Most of our 20th century experiments in building lots of stuff won't last a fraction as long as the average village built by peasants 1000 years ago.
A lot of the roots of NIMBYism go back to people trying to protect their very nice neighborhoods from the loads of crap we were building from the 50s-80s. That's not excusing all their behavior and arguments, but if you don't understand that aspect, and don't understand the history, you'll make all the same mistakes and invite an even bigger backlash.
What I feel like a lot of this comes back to is how the 20th century experiments in city-building completely disconnected us from things that were very normal for thousands of years. People can blame it on "the car," but there's plenty of places that didn't wreck themselves for easy parking and fast traffic. Cars themselves are not incompatible with great places that stand the test of time. I wish we could somehow frame this more as "natural human settlements" instead of "urbanism."
>>Yeah, when I see someone say “I should be able to live anywhere on any budget” I get why people connect housing advocacy with entitlement. That will never really be the case.
When I hear someone say this, I don't hear entitlement, I hear that they just want to live in their own city within 20 minutes of wherever the heck they work, and have a walkable neighborhood.
We're supposed to be one of the richest societies ever -- in fact, the original argument for the extravagant suburban development pattern was that we could afford it! If that's the case, then walkability shouldn't be considered some insane luxury that only the rich should be able to afford -- and thus to which younger people would supposedly (wrongly) feel "entitled" to.
My self doubt about urbanism comes in when I reflect that maybe my taste in the built space is just me being pretentious. Normal people like to drive (hard to argue that driving isn't convenient) and have a larger living space at the expense of a more pleasant built space. From my experience living in Estonia, as people have gotten wealthier, they want to own their own car and move to the suburbs--just like Americans do.
This isn't really a strong counterargument against urbanism, but generally speaking, the poorest people in the world live in crowded in cities because they have no choice. Once people become wealthier people will prefer to move to have more space, maybe own a car, and only once people become very wealthy and educated will a minority care enough about their built space to prefer urbanism (and an even smaller minority will care enough to write about it online or comment on a post like this one!)